Artful Amblings Feb 28th

*Also published on TallyScrapper.com.
Our end of the month post is brought to you by LARA!!

SILENCE

Silence and i have a weird relationship. I crave it yet fear it. Sometimes silence is louder than a rock concert for me. Other times it's calming and relieving.

Do you always need some sort of noise stimulus around you to feel comfortable, or do you look for times in your day to maybe meditate or just be still in?

I decided to express how i feel about Silence using Inchies! It's a very visual way to create a page which is exactly what i need right now as I've been journaling-challenged as of late. I found images in books and magazines, as well as used more personal images from my flickr page that silent my mind when i look at them.

I created a template for framing my inchies using a thick piece of card stock, ruler and exacto knife. To make the truest 1 inch square i could, i measured from one edge of the paper 2 inches in two areas and drew a line, then measured from that line 1 inch in two areas and drew another line - this made the lines parallel. I then turned the paper 90 degrees and did the same thing on the other side of the sheet so all sides were perpendicular to each other. Ugh - math, i know - guess my 10th grade teacher was right that I would need to use it some day!

I then used this template to place over images I was drawn to, framed them inside the cut out, then cut them directly out through the hole using my exacto knife. The card stock was thick enough to provide a good guide, but if you don't have card stock, or are nervous about cutting without a true straight edge, you could always trace with a pen around the hole then cut after.

For my digital images I used the same sort of method but using the Layers Palette in Photoshop. If you would like a step by step tutorial for that give me a shout out on my email or at the ning group and i can send you something.

As far as the number of inchies you want to do and the placement of them, i think it's completely up to you. I like symmetry so I cut an even number i could divide in half on each side of my journal spread. I tried laying them out in many different ways - grids, lines, frames ... and ended up with what i did because it was the most visually appealing to me.

For the background I just played with paint and ink. I wanted something bright, since silence can be so dark for me, so i used a couple of different shades of acrylic paint and blended them. Then stamped and stenciled like mad until i thought the page looked like it was done - keeping in mind that i would have to glue pieces of paper over it, so i didn't want anything too textured.

After my images were glued down I put some of my trademark finishing touches on it - white gesso found object circles and corrugated cardboard stamps. I also outlined some of the photos I wanted to highlight with white gesso, white pen and black pen.

Have fun playing in your art journals!
~rachel

All images and content on this blog is copyright to Rachel Whetzel unless otherwise specified. Please give credit when sharing your art that is inspired here! Thank you so much!!